Revival of Honor
by RahXephon
Summary: After Third Impact, humanity continued its course with almost no scars or memories left. In the far future, humankind has settled on many star systems. But a relic of the past threatens to destabilize everything. Having traversed many lightyears, mankind's greatest living weapon has reunited with its creators, and along with it a child. Honorverse/Eva crossover.
1. Chapter One

**Author's Notes:** This is generally one of those Evangelion crossover fics which have a lot more foreign fandom than Evangelion elements. That means it'll generally be a very confusing, frustrating, or boring read. I can't blame anyone but myself for that. Unless you've read the eleven major Honor Harrington books written by David Weber, you're going to get caught in a massive information dump. In addition, this is also a direct continuation from the eleventh book, so the only people who can fully enjoy this read are the ones who have also read the books that far, and I doubt there's any Evangelion fanfiction readers who have also read David Weber. So for any reader unfamiliar with those works, prepare for a huge and difficult read.

But do not worry. I have incorporated many explanations to introduce unfamiliar concepts to an unfamiliar crowd. Any foreknowledge in any fandom is not required to enjoy this fic.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the Honor Harrington universe. Full credits goes to the author David Weber. I do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion.

* * *

_**Revival of Honor**_

_Chapter One_

* * *

And it came to be known as the Manticore Square. A single trumpet sang its lonesome tone at the middle of the stage, while the gathered held their hands together and bent their heads down. As the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps detachment held their heads high in salute, the Royal Manticoran Navy personnel held their berets in their hands and bent their heads down. The Queen of Manticore, surrounded by her elite Queens Own, was more sombre than the rest. Her treecat Ariel sat on her padded shoulder, six limbs immobile while the procession continued on.

Around the Queen and her consort stood her Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister Baron Grantville. In front and below them stood the Lords. Earls, Barons, and Dukes, they represented almost the entire Upper House and were almost all extraordinarily wealthy from the lands they inherited since the colonization of the three original planets in the Manticore System.

And beyond them all, beyond the cordoned perimeter, stood the newsies. Reuters, United Faxes International, and all other major and minor news faxes swarmed the giant square. Most pointed their HD camera's towards the individual people rather than towards the general ceremony, hoping to catch an off-guard yawn or snore. But everyone present knew they were not alone. Millions of others in the city of Landing, the capital of the planet of Manticore, gathered themselves in front of their HD screens. Billions more on the rest of the planet did so likewise. And there were billions more from the planet of Sphinx and Gryphon who were watching likewise, not to mention those serving on the former Eight Fleet, now the newly designated Home Fleet.

Her fleet.

As the trumpet ended its mournful song, an announcer approached the centre stage situated right in front of a massive veiled monument. He called, "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Admiral of the Fleet and Captain of HMS _Unconquered_, Lady Dame Honor Stephanie Alexander-Harrington, Steadholder Harrington, Duchess Harrington."

That was her cue. The treecat on her shoulder bleeked slightly at the mention of what she thought were rather preposterous titles. It was almost unimaginable that barely over twenty Terran years ago, Honor was just a yeoman's daughter, going by the simple name and rank of Midshipman Honor Stephanie Harrington. She sighed. Times had changed since the First Havenite War, for the better, but certainly also for the worse.

Nimitz brushed his mind against the fleet admiral, nudging her to move. Her empathic link to other humans, a gift unique even among treecat adopters, made Honor fully exposed to the waves of sorrow and sadness that flowed from the crowd. The only contrast to those emotions were the cool professionalism and slight paranoia her own armsmen exuded. Their Green-on-green uniform befitting of the Harrington Steading on the planet of Grayson marked a stark contrast against her own black and gold Navy uniform.

Anticipation swelled as she stepped onto the podium. She put on her white beret before standing in front of the microphones and pre-placed holo cameras. The steading's armsmen, thorough as ever, placed themselves as unobtrusively but close as possible. With the many attempts on her life so far, it couldn't be helped. She coughed to clear my throat, and started her speech.

"Fellow Manticorans, Graysons, Andermans, and other citizens of the Alliance, we are gathered here today to remember the fallen. Not just those who fell on the Battle of Manticore four weeks ago, but also those who fell before in the First and Second Havenite War. Not just the five hundred thousand who perished in the cold of space to protect the Alliance and our home planets, but also the two million who died honourably fighting for the Republic of Haven."

"The Battle of Manticore is the single most largest space battle to have ever taken place in the history of mankind. In a matter of six hours, one hundred and thirty-nine capital ships serving the Alliance were battered to wrecks by enemy missiles or had their fusion plants malfunction and rip them from the inside. But it was not in vain. Through their valiant sacrifice, the former Home Fleet led by Admiral D'Orville and the Third Fleet led by Admiral Kuzak, aided by a critical superdreadnought squadron led by Admiral McKeon, defended this very planet against a devastating assault meant to cripple the entire war effort in one stroke."

"It was through the sacrifice of every single superdreadnought, LAC carrier, battlecruiser, heavy cruiser, light cruiser, destroyer, and light assault craft that we are still free today. It was through no small feat that they have managed to stop an armada of three hundred and fifty capital ships. It was they who destroyed two hundred and fifty one Havenite superdreadnoughts, while setting the conditions for the Eight Fleet to force the surrender and capture of sixty eight Havenite superdreadnoughts."

"No one could have predicted the audacity of Admiral Theisman and the rest of the Havenite leadership to launch an all-out operation against our home system. And before the Havenite Wars started, no one could have ever predicted a battle could have taken place with this level of carnage. The days of indecisive action and conservative measures are over. Missile pods have allowed us to strike at an ever increasing density at a single moment, overwhelming most countermeasures. Other innovations have allowed us to increase the range of missiles from barely two or three million kilometres, to a range at least twenty five times that number."

"It is easy for a Navy commander to order a strike against enemy forces. With battles taking place ranging from light minutes to as close as a hundred thousand kilometres, it has made the bloodbath invisible to the naked eye in the empty black void of space. Just a red dot disappearing from a radar screen, you could say. But no one can fool themselves otherwise of how many lives have vanished with that single red dot. Missiles fired from a typical range in the tens of millions of kilometres can take six or seven minutes to arrive at their destined targets. But from close by, as had been seen in the visceral engagement of our LACs against the screening elements of their Second Fleet, it can take half a second for our grasers and lasers to hit their units from a range of one-hundred-and-fifty thousand kilometres. Just the press of a button, and half a second later, tens or hundreds die in consequence. Add enough, and a battlecruiser carrying hundreds of personnel could all splatter against the bulkheads at a force of two hundred times of Terran gravity when their inertial compensator fails."

"War is anything but sterile and clean, no matter what has been perpetrated in the news. I know at this very moment, many widows and many orphans are listening to my humble words. But whatever I can say, it will not bring your loved ones and cherished ones back. My heart knows that I can not bring any of those five hundred thousand back. To those whose hearts are similarly shattered as mine, let me tell you that I share your grief. They died for us, for our children, and for the Queen. Let us cherish the fact that they have insured our survival as a star nation, which will shine its brilliance throughout the entire known universe for many times to come."

The crowd slowly became more jubilant. Others started clapping.

"Let us honour our fallen, and the fallen of our adversaries! Honour every enlisted and commissioned personnel, no matter whose allegiance!"

Everybody stood up and gave an applause.

"To the memory of the Battle of Manticore, its fallen, and the heroic leadership of Her Majesty's Navy who perished with them, I present to you the Admirals' Column!"

The curtains finally dropped from their magnificent height to reveal the marble column that lay beneath it. It was a monolithic pillar stretching limitlessly outwards towards the sky, seemingly never-ending. But at the top stood the trio of fallen admirals in their full pride. It was as if they were towering over the city of Landing from the heavens. It was a rarefied height no mortal could ever achieve to reach in their lifetime. Everyone looked up to see a glimpse of the admirals, aiming their applause not only to the fallen, but also to Honor.

It was they who deserved this applause. Sebastian. Theodosia. And Alistair. Not Honor. Not the one who made it out alive. Not the one who arrived too late to save any of them..

* * *

Captain Joseph DeJong was not a happy man. As a former Dolist, he suffered through the abhorrent 'democratized' education system of the former People'sRepublic of Haven under the rule of the Legislaturalists. He barely learned enough to recognize the alphabet of Standard English and count to ten. Basically, everything school had ever told him was to shut up at take his DLS, the Daily Living Stipend, as his reward in exchange for an automatic vote for the Legislaturalists to stay in power indefinitely. Even the presidency had become a hereditary office. 

All of that changed with the overthrow of the Harris Administration and the rest of the Legislaturalists. The Committee of Public Safety, led by Rob S. Pierre and aided by Oscar Saint-Just, picked up the leadership of the hundred worlds that consisted of the Republic of Haven and continued the disastrous war just started against the Manties. It was then, finally, that the middle-aged DeJong managed to get a decent education throughout the First War, courtesy of the reforms instituted then. He might have been too unskilled to serve on the Navy, but at least he'd managed to make it far enough to get his own mining and trading barge, the _Drunken Miner_. Even through the fall of the Committee, and the restoration of the Republic after the Terror instigated by Saint-Just and his State Security goons, he'd managed to get his head low between all the fighting in the civil war and make a fair profit on the way.

He was especially proud that his son made it to lieutenant since the outbreak of the Second War. Last he heard, he made it to lieutenant commander.

But now he was dead.

He was either one of the two million serving on a heavy cruiser who died in the Battle of Manticore. Or maybe, _just_ maybe, he was one of those four hundred thousand who were captured. Captured, and _alive_.

It would be too much to hope to know soon. And it would be at least until the end of the Second War until he could know for sure. Not that both sides had enough spirit left to continue on fighting, DeJong grimaced.

"Skipper, take a look at this."

Captain DeJong faced his exec Joris Schneider, an old pal from his Dolist days who was already graying. He was one of several who pooled enough credits to buy the aging 4,000,000 ton barge. Despite weighing as much as a pre-pod Dreadnought, even a single destroyer or a group of old style LACs could overpower her. But she didn't need to worry about any pirates within the core radius of the Republic of Haven. It wasn't nearly as bad as it was over at the Silesian Confederacy.

The captain gazed over the shoulder of his friend to view the sensor plot. With aged commercial grade sensors, the _Drunken Miner_ was myopic as it could get. Any moving small craft nearby had a good chance of passing undetected, even directly in front of the rusting barge. Her name was aptly deserved.

Even so, the spectro-sensors were as top of the line as DeJong could get at their price. If the _Miner_ could do at least one thing right, it was finding the most precious ores within a few light seconds of her position.

And if there was one thing that bothered Schneider for several days now, it was the odd 'sensor ghost' popping up every few hours in a fresh cluster of asteroids.

"It's the same. It shows up for a minute with a weak and unusual signal, and then it vanishes. This has to be more than a coincidence. And it's from the same cluster."

DeJong replied, "Hmmm.. might be. But I don't think there's anything but cheap ice rocks over there, even after the collisions. It's probably Hank on his _Lonely Pearl_ messing around with us. My god I certainly know we tricked him one to many times."

"It doesn't seem like Hank, Joe. If he were, he'd be a pretty persistent prankster to stay out there for two days straight. And think about it. There's something odd about the asteroids that collided with this cluster."

"Hmmm…"

Joris had a point, DeJong thought. They were surveying this belt because they heard of an isolated group of asteroids travelling 75 thousand kilometres a second relative to the system star Gaston on a collision course to its outer asteroid belt. It could have been a regular pack of worthless ice rocks, but it could have been a remnant of a collided moon or planet, practically ensuring there would be some exotic minerals available. All they found so far was ice and worthless rock, though.

"There's nothing but a few trace minerals on the rocks we've been surveying so far, so we might as well check it out. If it's nothing, we might as well stop waste our time here and burn more fuel for nothing."

"I suppose you're right.", and DeJong turned to his flight pilot, ordering, "Spool up the impeller drive and put us on a zero zero intercept course to about seventy thousand kilometres from that sensor ghost."

"Aye aye, skipper. It'll take fifty minutes for the drive to spool up and about three hours to navigate safely through these cluster to get there, though."

"Right, we'll have plenty of time to withdraw our fellows back inside before we translate."

It took four and a half hours to navigate careful enough to avoid the larger asteroids. If she was a warship, she could handle most small to medium bumps fine, and navigate more nimbly through the asteroid field. But the _Drunken Miner_ had to put on her dancing shoes on and pirouette through an intricate weave, in order avoid any uncomfortable collisions. It wasn't really necessary to avoid bumps that would barely make a dent on the anti-particle screen, but with the way the paint had been peeling off, DeJong wasn't taking any chances. All in all, it was a boring four and a half hour journey, and of the six hundred on board, almost all of them didn't expect much of this sensor aberration.

When the ship was finally in range, it halted. Schneider ordered an active scan while DeJong lit up a cigar.

Let's see what his rival Hank is up to now.

The old barge set aside its passive scans and made way to active scans. Intense radar waves and lidar pulses bombarded the general coordinates of the sensor ghost.

"There's nothing so far, Joe."

"Might as well keep scanning around it. Our mineral scanner ain't what it used to be these days.", DeJong remarked. Indeed, he was falling behind from his competitors, he thought while puffing out a ring of smoke.

It took barely ten minutes until one of the tech officers noticed a discrepancy.

"Skipper, I think you should take a look at this."

"Hm? What is it Kannman?"

The young tech officer, Jurgen Kannman, always had a knack of thinking outside the box and configuring the sensors in the best way to detect valuable ores. He was so good, DeJong pondered, that he should have been scouting out ores with his own ship. Still, the captain was glad he stuck around, and he amply rewarded him for that fact.

"There's nothing on the gravitic sensor, so it's probably not Hank, or at least he's completely shut down. But I can't detect any emissions either, from what these readings can give me. But there is an unusual concentration of density and mass at… _this_ particular asteroid. At the far side of us, I guess. It could be an odd collection of lead ore or something, but the density is lighter than usual."

"Well, I guess we can give it a look. Shall we send a mining probe or shall we move ourselves?"

"There's nothing on this side, so we might as well move our asses instead of waiting in a barren section."

"Very well. Move us a hundred _g _above the ecliptic plane in a circular orbit around the asteroid with the odd composition. We might as well scan more of the surface of that rock."

The old bulk accelerated slowly, and it took well over twenty minutes to expose the other side of the silent, potato-shaped, greyish asteroid. The impeller drive created a pair of large flat and slightly inclined wedges or bands of pure gravitic stress. Through some unknown technical marvel captain DeJong was unable to contemplate, his ship moved several hundred times faster than a pre-Diaspora 'rocket ship'. The two bands of gravitic energy covered the 'top' and 'bottom' of his ship, providing not only a means of propulsion, but also, especially important for warships, a pair of shields impenetrable to all known weapons. Gravitic sidewalls, while not impenetrable, was still many times as effective as conventional armour. But there was no solution yet for the bow and stern of the ship. 'Down the throat' and 'up the kilt' shots were still very effective, even though it was rumoured those Manties solved that little problem too.

"JOE, HOLY SHI—"

* * *

The only thought that really occupied Commodore Pike was _where the hell did it came from_?! Top scientists and engineers, as much as could be borrowed from Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker's top R&D teams, which produced amazing results against the technical superiority of the Manties, scoured over the uncovered relic of the past. There were only a few things the teams could agree on. One, it used to be purple. Two, it was about thirty meters long in it's current state. Three, by the several faded black letterings, it had to be human made. 

But the only thing the techies were really excited about was this impenetrable globe it emitted. Nothing so far worked to penetrate it, even a low yield nuke or a medium strength laser. The heavy stuff superdreadnoughts normally carried wasn't used yet, but they didn't have one on hand right now. But they suspected even a full salvo of nuke and X-ray missiles couldn't put a dent in it. It seemed the only thing that did penetrate the odd globe shaped with octagons when 'disturbed' was visible light, a tiny fraction of infrared, and some other harmless radiation. Since Impeller wedges blocked most EM radiation, that was a sure indication that this wasn't a gravitic stress sphere.

But that really didn't answer Commodore Pike's main nagging question: _where_ did it come from?! It certainly didn't seem like anything the Peeps, or Havenites could ever build, even with its colourful myriad of black projects. And for all the technological marvel the Manties possessed, even they couldn't ever build something as groundbreaking as _this_. It was more than a three-hundred-and-sixty bubble sidewall that protected stationary space forts. The shield the scientists were all fussy about was more or less equivalent to an _impenetrable_ three-hundred-and-sixty _impeller wedge_. Not a weak sidewall that is penetrable and will fall down after a few concentrated hits. But a real, series of perfectly surrounding octagons of impeller wedges. Or at least some equivalent of an impeller wedge, since for the last eight hundred years, nobody has ever managed to create more than a 'roof' and a 'bottom', and pretty much every scientist had discounted it ever happening.

And besides, think of what would happen if a bubble impeller wedge did exist. No single weapon ever known to man could ever stop a single ship. It could tear megatons upon megatons of ships apart, while they could hammer everything at it, but nothing thrown at it could ever succeed.

But there was one unknown quantity. Besides throwing heavy ordnance, there was one more thing that could possibly destroy the sphere or the _thing_ inside it. What would happen, Pike wondered, if an impeller wedge emanating from a ship would collide with the shield? Normally, a ship born impeller wedge that would budge against another major impeller wedge would instantly get both ships destroyed. Missiles powered by impeller wedges would not be strong enough to create that effect, though. But what would happen if it collided with that shield? If both the ship and whatever's in the shield got utterly annihilated, then they might have lost the only chance to duplicate an impenetrable shield.

"Commodore, there's an incoming transmission from the lead scientist."

Pike moved away from the central visual and turned towards his personal comm.

"Commodore Pike here. Tell us what you know, Benson."

The scientist known as Benson, and also one of Foraker's best civilian physicist, explained, "I can't really tell you more about this _extraordinary_ object, even if I want to. And there's so many reasons that we need to keep it as classified as possible. We need to move it out to one of our bases. The demolition team finished placing the charges that will split this side of the asteroid from the rest. Your battlecruiser should be able to tow the chunk with the bubble fine. We have to take it to Bolthole and Vice Admiral Foraker as soon as possible, really, but I am too frightened by the risks it would entail. There is no clue what would happen if we'd enter hyperspace translation. Any ship that enters hyper with its impeller wedge not configured to Warshawski sails will get instantly destroyed if we bump against the slightest grav wave. So there's no choice but to tow it back to Gaston."

Pike replied, "We can do that. I'll let the remaining heavy cruiser and light cruisers clear a path out this field, and slowly work our way towards a straight course for Gaston's orbital facility. I think we can probably fit the bubble between the battlecruiser's wedge, or if that is too risky, we can tow it beyond the wedge."

"It's dimensions are somewhat larger than a few 'donkey' platforms put together, but I think we'll manage to put this beast inside the envelope of a battlecruiser."

"So you think it's not so much as ship than…"

"It's definitely not a ship. We need to manage to uncover the half-buried state within the bubble, but I would definitely suggest those protrusions look oddly… organic. But I will leave you my hypotheses. Benson out."

Tapping the comm screen out, Pike moved out and rubbed his short cropped black hair. This really turned out to be as sensational as it could be. But why wasn't I excited, Pike thought. No matter, let the best of the Republic handle this. The commodore issued his orders on his flag bridge, coordinating a highly classified transport that could give the Republic a devastating technological edge against the Manties…

* * *

"…_to the memory of the Battle of Manticore, its fallen, and the heroic leadership of Her Majesty's Navy who perished with them, I present to you the Admirals' Column!"_

"Gosh, this can't get any worse.", Eloise Pritchard, the current President of the Republic of Haven, uttered, as she finished watching the eleven-day old footage from Manticore (it took eleven days for any news to travel about 300 light years from one to the other home planet, even though 210 light years is cut by an instantaneous journey between two wormhole junctions).

The Secretary of War (and the father of the modern Haven Republic), Thomas Theisman, replied, "It was as dignified as a military memorial should be, I suppose. They mentioned us Peeps as well."

"This is going to rub in our faces, Tom! The fact of the matter is, we've lost five times as many men and women out there, and we've lost pretty much our entire offensive weight on their home system, even though the relative rates favour us in the end. Our production capacity will enable us to replenish our forces at a much faster rate than they can, but whatever they will spit out of their yards will have those _invincible_ missile clusters! I've seen the reports as much as you did! We can't go down well unless we get some effective counter-measures against missiles that won't get fooled by whatever Electronic Warfare measures we can throw at them. And the range if they let it fly ballistic! Not only can't we detect it, it can effectively cripple a force a hundred and fifty million kilometres away! This is just—"

The Secretary of State, Leslie Montreau quietly intruded, "Now now Eloise, we can't help anything by panicking over their missiles. Is that right, Tom?"

"The fact of the matter is… we have really little else to go on. Operation Beatrice Bravo was our all our nothing… we committed our entire offensive naval force against their home system in a deciding battle. And while the rate of losses slightly favour our side, I can see no other point than denying we have been defeated. Admiral Foraker had been amazing, I can grant you that, but even she is stumped by the reports about the effectiveness of those missiles at extreme range and at massed salvo's. We are twenty, or thirty, or maybe even fifty years behind their level of miniaturization to be able to fit an FTL platform inside a missile and still expect it to accelerate the way those… Manty missiles did."

"Tom…"

"We've lost. It would take years to replenish both our losses, but they will have an even greater edge of technical superiority than they had at the end of the First Havenite War. And frankly, I don't give a single damn about it anymore!"

"I know that this war has been started out of outside manipulation, but—"

"Fuck the evidence! You just _know_ there's a third party out there who's intent on keeping us shooting and killing us until all the Battle of Manticores will tear our entire nations apart! And eventually, it simply wasn't worth it! I can not think but feeling worse than those Legislaturalists who mismanaged the People's Republic, or even the regime under Rob S. Pierre and Saint-Just. Are we, despite our lofty ideals and our fine constitution, just the same neobarbarians who send their flock to their death in a whim? I can't sleep well ever since the battle. And it was my suggestion, my idea, my operation. It was my responsibility. And I failed."

"You know darn well that you're the best Admiral and Secretary of War we got, Tom. I was also responsible for authorizing the op. But whatever we did, we did.. we can't quit now."

"At least I hope you're going after the bastards who killed off our attempt at a peace summit with the Manties."

"Tom… we're still barely making progress on that. Some of our own operatives seem to have a whiff, but it's still nothing so far on our side. And frankly, I don't expect anything in the short term."

"This is just great.. We just fought and lost the greatest space battle ever, we're short on the new class ship types, and everything they churn out the coming months will only add more to their fleet of smart clustered FTL controlled missiles. And for what? Just to dance at the tunes of an outside party! President, have we already sent a peace treaty?"

"You know we did, but with the time lag, it will take a few days yet to get a response in. It is about two hundred light years after all that the dispatch has to travel. But even if they feel like accepting a peace treaty, I am sure it will come at a heavy price."

Montreau added, "You know, Eloise, pretty much any treaty would be better than none, given how long they even refused to consider a real treaty and negotiate in good faith. There is one thing the battle had achieved, and that was that it made both parties thoroughly tired of war."

"I am absolutely _sick_ of it."

Tom leaned backwards from the circular desk and started, "Instead of beating ourselves up for the last month about the Battle… I have something else that might drastically change our perspective."

Theisman looked at the two for a small moment, before producing a file stamped with high confidentiality all over it. He passed it over to President Pritchard first, who after a minute of reading the outline was almost shocked. As the Secretary of State started skimming through the report, and observing the pictures, the Secretary of War explained.

"A miner found it at a rock field in the outer orbit of Gaston. Reports say some rocks of unknown origin collided with the field a few weeks earlier. Though almost buried within the asteroid, we can still trace some definite human elements in it. Whatever it is, it's _old_, most likely dating from the early post-Diaspora, but it is also possible it might even be before the first attempt of extra-solar colonization. There are faint and worn markings of Standard English on it, with the most obvious being the numbers 01. The teams are still debating whether it is a ship, or a different construct altogether. Already our network on Old Earth are scouring the historical databases and discretely consulting historians of what could have produced such a… remarkable construct."

Eloise piped in, "And the reports say there's nothing that could crack open this egg yet? That it really does have a full ensphered impeller wedge? The indestructible sort? Think of how this could turn the war! An indestructible ship! If we even had one of these babies, we could rip their entire wall of battle apart with no losses of our own! So are they really impenetrable?"

"Yes, Eloise, whatever the octagonal walls are, they are certainly not mere bubble sidewalls. We've thrown almost everything at it. Nukes, X-Ray, lasers, grasers, grav spikes, the works. There is one thing we haven't yet tried though, and I have to agree there's a certain risk involved."

"And that is…?", Montreau asked.

"We have yet to try to collide the bubble with another impeller wedge."

"That would destroy both the ship and whatever's inside the cocoon!"

Tom shaked his head, replying, "That is what would happen if regular impeller wedges would ever collide. However, this is definitely not an impeller wedge. There are absolutely no indication it works on gravitic energy at all even. But that does not mean nothing will happen if an impeller wedge and this.. unknown bubble would collide."

"Are you already trying to do such a thing…?"

"The teams are still trying to maximize the amount of information they can still get out of Zero One, which is how they call it. They don't want to risk destroying it while they still could have made some more visual and other observations while still.. intact. But essentially, they are cleared by me and Vice Admiral Foraker to proceed with 'Nutcracker' in a week."

"What are the possible consequences, Tom?"

"The likely scenario's either include destroying the ship projecting the wedge _or_ _Zero One_, or it might destroy both. It might bounce each other off instead. And one thing the engineers are eagerly betting on, is the chance that it might 'awake'."

"Awake? Do you really think an old relic such as this would ever activate and stomp on all of us?"

"We're not taking any chances, Eloise. This thing is projecting a bubble for centuries at least, and it still doesn't seem like it will run out of power. Nothing we throw at it so far seems to suck away its strength and capacity. This thing is powered, hibernated, but powered. I would hate to think what would happen if we'd wake this sleeping dragon. But on the other hand, we really are desperate for any innovation for the war effort at this stage. We can not really afford to let this jewel sit idle. If it's going to get destroyed, then so be it, if not, and if we can gain the secrets, we're better off. It's a risk I am willing to take."

"The same risk you took as when you initiated Operation Beatrice Bravo?", Montreau added bitterly.

"…"

After an awkward silence, Pritchard concluded, "We are pretty much dead meat already for the coming months. No matter how much of a numerical superiority we really have against the Alliance the coming year or two, we can't win against their top-of-the-line models. We don't have an easy fix this time. With the Solarian League pretty much fifty years behind in the latest Manty technology, we can't trade tech good enough to gain anything from those overconfident Sollies."

Admiral Theisman added in, "It's worse since Operation Buttercup held us at our throat at the end of the First War.. the Sollies are pretty much seventy years behind, give or take a few. Actually, I am amazed that our current tech is _more_ advanced than anything the Sollies have."

"It's all the same… we're heading down the same path we treaded in the First War.. and we can not hope for a miracle and assassinate their cabinet like Saint-Just pulled off in the late minute."

"End it, Eloise. Political and public opinion consequences be damned."

"If the Manties let us."

* * *

Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker, the woman in charge of pretty much every single technical innovation to offset the Manties' advantage, could hear the alarm throughout the bridge of Space Station _Belvedère_ announce, "General alarm, general alarm. All personnel clear the vicinity of the test site. T-minus 60 seconds until commencement." 

Lead scientist Jason Benson stood next to the Admiral, eyes focused onto the different consoles spread out of them. Once in a while, he passed instructions to the operator handling them.

"T-minus 30 seconds until commencement."

Benson rubbed his palms, and remarked, "This is it. I really do hope we get to crack this nut."

Foraker replied, "Or perhaps we might blow this entire sector of space apart. I do wonder whoever could have made a device that would emit such a shield."

"It's definitely pre-Diaspora by the signs of decay. We're not quite sure, but we think _Zero One_ was a tetrapod land vehicle of some sort from Old Earth. It's hard to tell with most of it buried underneath the rock within that impenetrable cocoon, but we managed to get a general shape of what's underneath. We're still estimating it's only 30 meters long though. Barely one seventh the length of a LAC or one twelfth of a destroyer. "

"Perhaps it was invented during the chaotic Final War… who knew what those genetic supermen could cook up.."

"Might very well be possible. There is nothing in known Physics that could ever describe this remarkable shield. But it is definitely not made out of gravitic energy. In a few seconds, we'll see if this 'O-shield' will hold it's own against a large impeller wedge."

"Commencing procedure Nutcracker I."

The roughly spherical chunk of asteroid, with the general shape of a large man-made object half-buried, was fixated in a point of space twenty kilometers away from Space Station _Belvedère_. An obsolete RHNS Light Assault Craft, modified to be remote controlled, descended slowly downwards. Everyone held their breath as the LAC's lower impeller band traveled closer and closer to where the now-invisible layer of octagons lay. There were simply no models to predict what would happen when the band, seven or eight times larger than the bubble, would collide with the surface of the O-shield.

Everyone held their breath, as did Foraker and Benson when they viewed the large visual. 3..2…1…

"Collision confirmed!"

"Impeller wedge is holding, but fluctuating!"

"O-shield is optically visible, reading no emissions or fluctuations from the shield or _Zero One_."

"Impeller drive is overloading, critical breakdown imminent! It's going to blow!"

In the end, a pure sheet of Gravitic stress, to this date unimpenetrable, and indestructible except when it collided with another similar sized or larger stress band, could not hold it's own against the totally _alien_ O-shield that consisted of discrete octagons. There was simply no way it was human-build, many people still argued. But the signs and the letters were unmistakable. That was Standard English imprinted on there. _Zero One_'s O-shield completely overwhelmed the LAC's impeller wedge and made the craft explode. Several pieces of debris flung towards the Space Station, but it was harmlessly bounced back by its escorting LACs who put their bellies up against the test site.

And under the cloud, the same shape emerged practically unchanged.

"O-shield has gone invisible again. We gained absolutely no readings from _Zero One_ except for some faint radio signals."

Shannon, Benson, and their teams proceeded throwing incrementally larger ship types against _Zero One_'s shield. After the LAC they threw an obsolete destroyer, before moving on to even a one-point-four kilometer long superdreadnought. But the relatively tiny _Zero One_ managed to overload even the military grade impeller drive of a six million ton warship. And it did it without seemingly putting any effort into it.

Foraker sighed, and muttered, "Nutcracker VIII failed too, I guess. Perhaps the only thing that could destroy this beast is either throw it in a sun or a black hole."

"I doubt even the hot furnace of a sun would dent this baby. Extreme heat has done absolutely nothing so far. We might be able to cook it with an overabundant bombardment of infrared radiation, but I wouldn't count on that with the tiny fraction the O-shield lets through."

"In any case, all we got were jumbles of radio waves. We can't do anything with them."

"No.. but I heard one of my comm. techs had an idea. Jackson?"

The one known as Jackson rolled his chair from his console to face his superior, explained, "Sir.. there's something peculiar about these waves. I think they're brainwaves."

Foraker gaped. Brainwaves?! But that was…

"And can you confirm it, Jackson?"

"We'll have to bring a biotech or a doctor to confirm it for sure, but I'm pretty certain these are brainwaves typical of a human in sleep."

"Thank you, Jackson."

Foraker immediately pressed, "But.. but.. that would imply that- that _thing_ is actually a _he_ or a _she_!"

"One of our guesses was that it was some sort of war machine made by the genetic supermen in the days of Earth's Final War. Those genies might have been able to create a biological giant and—"

"No! I mean.. ugh, I'm utterly confused. Just get us a biotech from the nearest space station infirmary, and get us a specialist too. Even though it sounds preposterous, we have to act on this.. development."

"Very well, admiral. I've already invited the necessary specialist. But to think _Zero One_ was really a biomechanical construct… simply amazing."

* * *

"What do we have, gentlemen.", Vice Admiral Foraker started. 

Benson replied, "We definitely nailed down the biological component of the construct. It makes sense when you compare it with the general outlines of the shape. It's human-shaped, and I bet you there's biological tissue underneath the worn armor plating."

A specialist added, "The subtle waves _Zero One_ emits whenever it's O-shield is stimulated is particular similar, but not exactly the same of a human in rest. I can not think of a reason why a completely mechanical thirty, or in our latest estimates, fourty meters tall construct would have this feature. Especially since the ban against many unscrupulous genetic practices since the Beowulf Code."

"We all know that there's always a rogue element out there still dealing with that.. especially the Mesa genetic slavers.."

It was quite well known that the only thing both the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven could agree on is the strict enforcement against genetic slave trade. Other chaotic or more corrupt nations, such as the Silesian Confederacy, or the humongous Solarian League, are too infiltrated by agents or too cumbersome in size to do anything about it. The remnants of the genetic 'supermen' from Earth's Final War had settled on the planet of Mesa and continued dabbling in genetics ever since. It's greatest source of income is the breeding of purpose-built human slaves for labor, but especially for pleasure. Manpower Unlimited is the most nefarious company in the known human universe.

"But I still find it.. unlikely that the Mesans could ever build such a thing.."

Benson added, "But we can't rule it out either. But we have more from the local Astrograph Agency. Vladimir, go ahead."

The Astrograph physicist stood up and presented his findings. He passed around several sheets, showing trajectories and other statistics of the cluster of asteroids that had collided with Gaston's local field.

"As you can see from the plot, we have been actively tracking this cluster for some time when it neared the hyper limit of Gaston's system. When word came out of _Zero One_'s incredible human origin, we put to work on what we could find more about the traveling cluster. As you can see further down the plot, when we extrapolate the speed and displacement vector the cluster had been traveling from the data we have already collected, you can see it originated south of the Republic of Haven's dominion on the galactic map. When we draw a rather straightforward line, compensated for movements within the galaxy and other effects and constants, we can draw a line about five hundred and fifty light years long straight back to Terra."

Everyone except Benson and other informed scientists gaped their mouths.

"In fact, if we compare the vector speed relative to Old Earth, and if we can assume the cluster has not been affected by acceleration, other collisions, or nearby gravity wells, we can assume with moderate confidence that it has been traveling a ballistic course since 87 pre Diaspora. Or in other words, since 2016 Anno Domini."

Even more gapes abound. 87 pre Diaspora was well a millennium before Earth's Final War took place. In fact, almost nobody in the room could imagine how barbaric and uncivilized Old Earth had been in the time before space colonies existed.

"I know 87 pre Diaspora sounds very far-fetched, but our tests on the asteroid rocks revealed it had the same composition as some of the rocks of the Kuiper Belt orbiting the Sol System. The general decay of the paint and other features is also roughly consistent of a 2009 year journey traveling across 550 light years. This beast has traveled in outer space for two millennia."

Benson stood up again and continued, "This is all quite fascinating. That a two thousand year old relic of the past can even defeat a warship many times it's weight and size, and still practically be indestructible, is mind boggling. We already have the best historians and agents scuffling through everything at Terra. Given the length of time that has passed, I don't suppose we can expect to dig much up. But meanwhile, we can still attempt to do another nutcracker."

The same biospecialist stood up again and explained, "I have an idea on how to influence _Zero One_. As you know, we have several means on hand to radiate dense pulses to subtly affect a mammal in its sleep. To make the long story short, we're doing the same thing on _Zero One_."

"Will it work to deactivate the O-shield, or wake up _Zero One_?", Foraker asked.

"We have a few theories, but frankly, we can't expect _Zero One_ to behave exactly like a human being. But certainly we expect to be able to influence some of its patterns. We'll have to work out the finer points of our next procedure though."

"Very well. Bring me your plan as soon as you can to my desk, and we'll clear the station for our next nutcracker. Let's hope we succeed, and use the technology to turn the tide of the war."

* * *

"T-minus 60 seconds until commencement." 

The same chunk of asteroid was still fixated 20 klicks from an extension of _Belvedère_. A small mobile platform floated nearby, with all its arrays squarely aimed at _Zero One_. As the time counted down, its giant capacitors geared up for the large amount of energy required to emit a distinct sharp and very strong pulse. LACs floated between _Belvedère_ and the test site to shield the station from any incoming debris. And just in case, a small squadron of destroyers and light cruisers, as well as a single superdreadnought, stood on standby in case anything serious would happen…

"Commence pulse 1.", Benson ordered.

"Commencing pulse 1."

A humongous jolt ran through the platform, instantly emitting a dense packet of pulses. Most seemed to be blocked by the O-shield, but an unknown portion managed to get through. Everyone waited in silence and stared at the visual, just hoping that whatever they did managed to wake up the sleeping beast, or better, deactivate the O-shield so they could pick _Zero One_ apart.

But after over two minutes, there was not a single response.

Everyone had long continued breathing normally. A sense of disappointment cast over the bridge crew. Admiral Foraker and lead scientist Benson went through the various consoles, hoping there would be something they could have picked up. Nothing so far, not even short moments of brainwave patterns had been emitted, however faintly.

"Very well. No results at all. Begin preparing pulse 2."

"Preparing the platform to emit pulse 2."

"Well admiral, it seems likely that if the first pulse didn't do the job, the following ones are likely to do nothing against _Zero One_. I'm afraid we'll likely have to—"

"Sir, there's a reading!"

"We've got another reading! The brainwaves are strengthening, spiking even! It's… it's.. it's a resonating pattern! It's resonating with _another_ set of brainwaves!"

"What?!", Benson let out. "There's _another_ brain in that monster?"

"Whatever's happening, it's multiplying in strength!"

"We're detecting several unknown readings! I can't make much of the readings currently, but whatever it is, it's getting more chaotic!"

"These sets have gone off the charts!"

"The resonating patterns have moved to a hundred percent synchronization, but it's still gaining in strength! It's moving _beyond_ a hundred percent synchronization, but this shouldn't even be possible!"

"Sir, we've got confirmed movement of _Zero One_ on visual!"

Everyone whipped their heads at the giant HD display, where the view was zoomed in towards what the scientists have designated as the left arm. It was obvious that the half-submerged limb began to rumble, vibrate. As the frantic calls of the console operators streamed on, the arm began to wiggle itself out of rock, until the arm abruptly stretch. Foraker had nothing but pure fascination in her head as she watch the giant hand stretch its fingers. So… human, she thought.

The biomech's four limbs, one submerged completely within the bedrock, all shuddered and moved. The O-shield flared up it's orange octagons, even going so far to completely cut out the rock at the edge of the sphere, separating _Zero One_ and _Belvedère_ from any physical attachment. The beast shuddered and wrestled more under its half-buried state, until finally, the tip of a horn bore through the rock. Everyone gasped at the horrendous sight of an armored and horned _head_, with its eyes aglow.

"It's, it's alive!"

"We're still getting readings on it!"

_Zero One_ managed to submerge itself completely, flinging absent pieces of asteroid from its mechanical grey body of what used to be purple and green. Everyone couldn't help but notice how fluid and how human-like its movement were. This was definitely not a pure machine. It was a living thing. As _Zero One _stood up, it turned its head ominously towards the giant white space station. Its head bent over backwards and its jaws tore from its upper head to reveal a row of very nasty teeth. Even though the vacuum of space didn't allow sound to be carried, everyone knew that the thing was _screaming_.

"Get our defenses online! Don't use active scans yet unless it attacks! Set the space station on state Red-1!"

"Order the destroyers to approach! Make sure the LACs hold their formation!"

The head abruptly turned back towards the space station. Stretching its arms, it initiated some unknown process that strengthened parts of the O-shield. The illuminated orange patterns looked just like.. a pair of angel wings. And it seemed like.. _Zero One _was translating.. straight towards the space station!

"It's coming in straight on! Keep the LACs in its path, but don't fire at it yet!"

"Sir! _Zero One_ is abruptly powering down! O-shield is turning down from its excited state to its ground state!"

"Visuals confirm it's crouching in a fetal position!"

"_Zero One_ is still on a ballistic course towards the space station. As soon as it's safe, the tow boats will try to halt the O-shield from continuing to collide.."

"Sir, a white capsule has been ejected from the back of _Zero One_'s neck! The capsule's length is roughly four meters while its diameter is roughly one-and-a-half meters. Course is perpendicular from the surface of its neck. Its passing from the inside of the O-shield like there's no barrier at all! It's heading out into space."

"Retrieve that capsule! Send a LAC, or anything else that might do!"

"_Zero One_ has returned to a state of hibernation similar to the state when we found it."

"Send the tow boats to halt it. And what's the progress on that capsule."

"Bearing one-zero—"

The only thing right now in Shannon's mind is the jubilant anticipation of success. Whatever is in that capsule, Foraker argued, is the secret to turning the tide of the war. The Republic of Haven might be able to smash the Manties' arrogant faces with this three-hundred-and-sixty degree spherical shield.

* * *

**Glossary**

**BC—**

Battlecruiser. The lightest unit considered a 'capital ship'. Designed to destroy anything it can catch and to outrun anything that can destroy it. Average tonnage from 500,000-1,200,000 tons.

**Beowulf Code—**

A code of ethics for medical practitioners that originated from the planet Beowulf in the Sigma Draconis system. The planet is renowned for its medical establishment. Its practitioners developed a code of ethics in the wake of Earth's Final War. It supplants the Hippocratic Oath.

**BLS—**

Basic Living Stipend. The welfare payment from the PRH government to its permanent underclass. Essentially, the BLS was a straight exchange of government services for a permanent block vote supporting the Legislaturalists who controlled the government.

**CA—**

Heavy cruiser (from Cruiser, Armored). Designed for commerce protection and long-endurance system pickets. Designed to stand in for capital ships against moderate level threats. Average tonnage is from 160,000–350,000 tons, although that has begun to creep upward towards traditional battlecruiser tonnage ranges in some navies.

**CL—**

Light cruiser. The primary scouting unit of most navies. Also used for both commerce protection and raiding. Average tonnage is from 90,000–150,000 tons.

**Committee of Public Safety—**

The committee established by Rob S. Pierre after his overthrow of the Legislaturalists to control the PRH. It instituted a reign of terror and systematic purges of surviving Legislaturalists and prosecuted the war against the Star Kingdom.

**Dolist—**

One of a class of Havenite citizens totally dependent on the government-provided Basic Living Stipend. As a group, undereducated and underskilled.

**Hyper Limit—**

The critical distance from a given star at which starships may enter or leave hyper-space. The limit varies with the mass of the star. Very large planets have hyper limits of their own.

**Hyper-space—**

Multiple layers of associated but discrete dimensions which bring points in normal-space into closer congruence, thus permitting effectively faster than light travel between them. Layers are divided into "bands" of closely associated dimensions. The barriers between such bands are the sites of turbulence and instability which become increasingly powerful and dangerous as a vessel moves "higher" in hyper-space.

**Impeller Drive—**

The standard reactionless normal-space drive of the Honor Harrington universe, employing artificially generated bands (or "wedges") of gravitic energy to provide very high rates of acceleration. It is also used in hyper-space outside gravity waves.

**Impeller Wedge—**

The inclined planes of gravitic stress formed above and below a spacecraft by its impeller drive. A military impeller wedge's "floor" and "roof" are impenetrable by any known weapon.

**Inertial Compensator—**

A device which creates an "inertial sump," diverting the inertial forces associated with acceleration into a starship's impeller wedge or a naturally occurring gravity wave, thus negating the g-force the ship's crew would otherwise experience. Smaller vessels enjoy a higher compensator efficiency for a given strength of wedge or gravity wave and thus can achieve higher accelerations than larger vessels.

**Manties—**

Slang term for citizens of and (especially) military personnel/forces of the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

**Peeps—**

Slang term for citizens and (especially) military personnel of the (Peoples') Republic of Haven.

**PRH—**

Peoples' Republic of Haven. The name applied to the Republic of Haven during the period when it was controlled by the Legislaturalists and/or the Committee of Public Safety. It was the PRH which began the current war by attacking the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Manticoran Alliance.

**Republic of Haven—**

The largest human interstellar political unit after the Solarian League itself. Until recently it was known as the Peoples' Republic of Haven, ruled by an hereditary governing class known as the Legislaturalists until they were overthrown by Rob S. Pierre. Thereafter controlled by Pierre through the Committee of Public Safety until it, too, was overthrown in turn and the original constitution of the Republic was reinstated.

**SD—**

Superdreadnought. The largest and most powerful hyper-capable warship. Average tonnage is from 6,000,000–8,500,000 tons.

**Sidewalls—**

Protective barriers of gravitic stress projected to either side of a warship to protect its flanks from hostile fire. Not as difficult to penetrate as an impeller wedge, but still a very powerful defense.

**Solarian League—**

Largest, wealthiest star nation of the explored galaxy, with a decentralized government managed by extremely powerful bureaucracies.

**Sollies—**

Slang term for citizens or military personnel of the Solarian League.

**Star Kingdom of Manticore—**

A small, wealthy star nation consisting of two star systems: the Manticore System and the Basilisk System.

**Treecats—**

The native sentient species of the planet Sphinx. Six-limbed, telempathic arboreal predators which average between 1.5 and 2 meters in length (including prehensile tail). A small percentage of them bond with "adopted" humans in a near symbiotic relationship. Although incapable of speech, treecats have recently learned to communicate with humans using sign language.

**Warshawski**** sails—**

The circular gravity "grab fields" devised by Adrienne Warshawski to permit starships to "sail" along gravity waves in hyper-space.

* * *

**End Notes:** To anyone who actually read throughout the entire work, congratulations. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and not bore you too much. Though I probably did bore many people. Please review this chapter if you have the time. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this random bubble of an idea. Thank you for reading my work. 

Though, perhaps I should have written the Battlestar Galactica 2004/Honorverse crossover instead.


	2. Chapter Two

**Author's Notes:** I am certainly surprised by the number of Honorverse fans present in Eva fandom. I've already received six reviews of professed Honorverse fans, and that's about five people more than I originally expected.

Let me remind to all readers that the first books of the Honor Harrington series are free and legally available on the interent. The publisher's website has an online library where you can read the first book, _On Basilisk Station_, completely free on pdf, word, or through your browser. Search for Baen books online library.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the Honor Harrington universe. Full credits goes to the author David Weber. I do not own Neon Genesis Evangelion.

* * *

_**Revival of Honor**_

_Chapter __Two_

* * *

As Theisman emerged through the personnel tube of his personal shuttle together with his other aides, he thought how very important these next few days could be. Indeed, he was grasping at straws, any straws, in order to find one that could put the pressed and distressed Republic of Haven in a better position. With the current lull in fighting at the aftermath of the Battle of Manticore, Theisman could well afford spend his time away from Nouveau Paris, the capital city of the planet of Haven. The second-tier star system of Gaston wasn't much to look at, certainly not when it was raided by a formidable force under 'The Salamander'. But Harrington had been an honorable adversary, and had given each soldier and civilian ample time to evacuate.

"Chief of Naval Operations, arriving!", an announcer reported while standing at attention.

Theisman always managed to feel amused by the need of the navy to refer to him as the CNO, instead of his technically civilian superior rank as Secretary of War. That 'his' navy regarded him as one of their own admiral, rather than a good for nothing politician, was an unusual quirk. But he certainly enjoyed it.

"Permission to come aboard?", Theisman asked formally.

"Permission granted.", a junior commander replied.

Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker greeted his superior, "Welcome aboard the _Belvedère_, sir. It's not as cozy after the raid, but it's getting a bit more bustling."

"I am sure the facilities are ample for a short stay. But let us get down to business."

"Certainly, sir. Walk this way to the briefing room, please."

It had taken them well over ten minutes to ride an elevator and walk towards the center of the massive circular space station meant to accommodate up to fifty superdreadnoughts and their screening elements. Though not as gigantic as the Manties' _Hephaestus_, it was a cheap and functional base of operations, if ever needed. Second-tier systems were perfect for the 'jack-of-all-trades' functions a basic orbital space station such as the _Belvedère_ provided. As Theisman could see all around him, there were plenty of civilian and trade activity, even after the raid.

Well, they must have all thought that lightning never struck the same place twice.

The admiral was inclined to agree with that thought, though it would be a few months before they first start raiding again. And this time, there would be no technological way to stop those FTL clustered missiles that evaded every EW measures. The Manties prided their technological superiority in both wars, and they vigorously guarded every single approach to infiltrate their military R&D divisions. In fact, the only thing NavInt had been able to glean was that the faster-than-light communications missile that accompanied eight regular missiles was called Apollo.

It was certainly appropriate to call a missile that never missed their mark after the god of archery.

That was what made a personal visit to their latest hope of a technological marvel even more pressing. After all, try as it might, a missile that never missed could never hope to penetrate a shield that never presents any holes. Such possibilities would provide an infinite leap of progress from impeller wedges, while indestructible, only covered the 'roof' and 'bottom' of a starship.

When he entered the briefing room, he finally understood why they had taken the exhaustive journey. It was apparent that the room usually held meetings between medical specialists and doctors. The various tools, the holographic skeleton model, and a bookshelf of rare printed medical books made that apparent. But the biggest clue was undoubtedly the extremely wide tinted blue window, beyond which showed a simple and sterile white room, with beds and other medical equipment. The only occupant of that room lay peacefully on the bed, with several wires attached to his skin.

Theisman knew the next meeting was about _him_.

Several other figures poured in the room and took a place at the circular donut shaped table. Everyone held their notes or their personal device on hand. Theisman could even feel his marine guards discretely taking place at direct angles from each other.

Admiral Foraker started the meeting.

"I am sure you're as curious as hell since my last dispatch, Tom. So let's get to all the details we've learned since we've recovered that capsule."

Lead scientist Benson stood up, and in his usual vague self-possessed way he started, "As you know, Secretary Theisman, this capsule has presented us with a wealth of information. Through deductions and through intense research of the capsule itself we have several conclusions."

He paused for dramatic effect, eager to make himself look better in front of Theisman, before he continued, "The build of the capsule has shown us undeniable proof that _Zero One_ is most definitely human built, or at least human adapted. The materials used and the way it has been constructed is certainly quite crude, and some would say archaic, but it is consistent with the technological level at a hundred years pre Diaspora. The interior showed that the capsule likely functioned as a cockpit for a single controller, though we are not certain how a human could control two relatively simple joysticks on either side of their seat. We have not gained any definite conclusions on how a complicated bipod construct such as _Zero One_ could be controlled with such limited options."

Theisman asked, "So, does the presence of a cockpit confirm that this '_Zero One_' is a pre Diaspora war machine?"

"Oh, I would not pinpoint it to a tool used for _warfare_, since there is a lack of any cannons or other ranged weaponry, but it might be possible that external equipment had existed. Some had suggested that whoever built these machines couldn't 'bolt on' weaponry on _Zero One_, since it would be too complicated or impossible to control. The reasoning behind that will follow in a moment."

"Continue with what you have to say about the capsule."

"The capsule is actually remarkable simple, and limited really. There are not much interfaces and the bandwidth for data transmissions is equally limited. We seriously doubt a forty meter tall construct could be controlled at all with such few commands. Combine that with the fact that the joysticks are remarkably simple, we knew there had to be another answer."

"And have you found that answer?"

"We are not quite certain just yet, but we think it has to do with the atrociously smelling yellow liquid contained within the capsule. When we first opened the hatch, we were practically flooded by the sheer amount it contained. In fact, by the volume drained out and the volume of the interior, we think the capsule _and _its occupant was completely submerged in it."

Seemingly unimpressed, Theisman questioned, "So the capsule was nothing but a crude medvat?"

"That was what we had thought too, but the liquid is too different from any typical medvat fluid. The composition is quite remarkable and.. shall I say out of this world. The liquid is slightly viscous, and we gather that such a property is useful in absorbing shocks. Its composition though is what made is especially peculiar. Besides oxygen, it contains a remarkable collection of organic components vaguely resembling human blood. How a human could ever breathe such a thing is a mind boggling proposition. We still have to find out more about it. Oh, and there's one more thing about the capsule."

An engineer stood up from the other side of the table and explained, "With primitive technology like this, it was to be expected really. We have not found any accommodations or indications that there's an inertial compensator present in the capsule, and we do not expect _Zero One_ itself to have such an ability. This is logical, since the technology was well emerged a few ages after post Diaspora, and a land vehicle such as _Zero One_ is never built to withstand a few _g_'s of force. Even though it might be able to travel in space with that remarkable O-shield, it will translate slower than a snail compared to a decent starship. It can't handle the hundreds of _g_'s necessary to achieve an acceptable velocity in any modern space battle without squashing any biological material to goo. And we suspect that _Zero One_ is a lot more biological than just the pilot component itself."

"Ah, the pilot. I've not heard much of him. Tell me about him."

The engineer backed down and Benson stood up again and started to talk, "It was certainly a great shock to see a living human being inside a two thousand year old capsule. Several of us suspected that it wasn't true, that _Zero One_ and the capsule couldn't have been two millennia old, that is was really a Mesan experiment gone missing. But while it is already confirmed that the capsule is remarkably old, we were etremely surprised to find out that biologically, the tissue of the pilot is extremely young. In fact, he was born precisely the moment _Zero One_ awakened."

Admiral Theisman seemed genuinely surprised at that statement.

"Say again?"

"The cells compromising his body couldn't have been formed before that incident. There are just simply too many tell-tale signs that it's basically a brand new body. It is vaguely like the process of accelerated growth that bred the Skrags in the Final War. The cells may be a week old, but the lifetime-age is roughly in his teens, between fourteen and sixteen years old."

"But why would _Zero One_ spontaneously create a human body?"

"We've asked that question among ourselves as well, and with no definite answer. It's pure speculation. It could be that _Zero One_ creates human pilots 'on-demand' whenever needed. It could be that the human, this very same human, was the original pilot for _Zero One_, but somehow had gotten biologically broken down two thousand years ago. There are a lot of facts that doesn't add up really, since I can't think who'd use a teenager to control a dangerous machine such as _Zero One_. But whatever had transpired with his body, we think it had to do with the yellow liquid."

Theisman looked absolutely fascinated, Benson thought. So much the better to advance his career.

"As we've already mentioned, the yellow liquid contains plenty of organic components and non-organic minerals. Theoretically, purely theoretically, a human being could be created out of the yellow liquid."

"But.. but.. not even the Mesans could do that probably!"

"We have no idea at all how it came to pass as well. We would need to study _Zero One_ itself to unlock that secret, but with the O-shield still up, we're not able to. We can not answer most of the how and why's, simply said, even though the technological base originated from the pre Diaspora times."

"Very well.", Theisman nodded, while staring through the blue tinted window at the resting occupant.

"Ah, I think we reached the subject about the pilot's identity itself. Well, we can only garner from the absence of any imprinted chips or implants, and the unusual way the body was formed, that he's not from this era. His DNA patterns certainly set him apart from the modern genotype of all the known settled universe. From the differences, he'd have to be from at least early post Diaspora. His ethnicity on Old Earth has been narrowed down to the 'Japanese'."

"Hmmm… I haven't heard of these Japanese before. Where have the modern Japanese settled today?", Theisman pondered.

"They contribute a significant portion in the Solarian League. Outside of it, there's not many planets that a majority of Japanese have settled upon. The nearest obvious Japanese settled colony world is Reiko, a neutral one planet Star System fifty light years north of Manticore."

"Great, so I guess we don't have any natural speakers of Japanese around."

"No, we do not have one on hand, but if we need to speak to the pilot, we can use a translation aid."

The admiral glanced at the unconscious boy. So… young. He could never really imagine the nerve of a military commander who would send _children_ out to war.

"Have you talked to him yet?"

Foraker, silent so far, abruptly stood up and said, "No sir, we've yet woken him up since he seemed to be too weak to handle a forced wakeup. We've spent the last few days normalizing his body functions and examining him. But truthfully, he's ready to wake up any moment now. In fact, I thought I'd wait for you to be there when he first wakes up."

"That is awfully thoughtful of you, Shannon."

"I'm glad to serve you, sir. We have a doctor on standby and a translation aid configured in two thousand year old Japanese ready to be used."

"Well then, I'd like to hear what else your people have found out before we'll meet up with the child."

"Very well, sir. Now, as you can see here, we…"

* * *

Being a rear admiral of the most powerful space navy in the known universe was usually considered a very coveted position. But frankly, rear admiral Sandra Harper was bored out of her mind. One of the many strings that came attached to being the most powerful political entity was nobody actually _fought_ the Solarian League. Placed comfortable within the Shell, the binary star system Trax was just one of the one-thousand-seven-hundred-and-eighty-four members that compromised the League. Its only habitable planet, Trax III, hadn't warranted its own name, despite its eight hundred year old history. Most of it had to do with the uncomfortable desert conditions on the surface, not to mention bearing the heat of two suns. Some people even wondered why anyone would settle on what was basically a ball of sand and rock. 

Sandra Harper wasn't one of those people. She loved the desert. There was something charming about climbing on a low cliff and facing the vast expanse of emptiness. The Traxans have carved a particular niche on their side of the League with cultivating native wildlife and mining exquisite jewels. They had only been able to settle on the poles of the planet so far, since the equator was basically an oven. At least the gravity was only a bearable 1.05 times Old Earth's gravity. The rear admiral shuddered at the thought of living on one of those 1.40 planets that dotted nearby on the galactic map.

However small and unimportant the Trax system mattered in the League, it still warranted at least a token fleet garrison to hold the fort. But given Trax's position in the Shell, there were much better hunting grounds for pirates. And so it came to pass that the 650th Defense Fleet boasted an 'impressive' number of six relatively dusty _Concorde-_class destroyers, four passable _Devreaux_-class light cruisers, twelve ancient _Bargant-_class heavy cruisers, and a small swarm of pirate-hunting frigates and LACs. For all intents and purposes, Trax definitely got the short end of the reinforcement list. In fact, Harper thought, the 650th only received hand-me-downs from other fleets' hand-me-downs, which was probably a hand-me-down of yet another fleet.

Still, the rear admiral took it all in stride and made the best of what she had. She was certain to keep the Defense Fleet at top efficiency, and scrounge the local refitting station for any bargains on whatever components they could stick on her aging vessels. It came at a cost for relatively little benefit, but it would lengthen her ships' lifespan by a significant bit. But realistically, the thought of an invading fleet swooping down on Trax to bring death and destruction was an utter preposterous idea.

That was what made rear admiral Harper rub her eyes once, twice and thrice at the sudden plot her gravitic sensor platforms kept up to date in real-time. At the instant four large hyper footprints were detected an hour earlier at the edge of the hyper limit of the system, everyone assumed it would be a routine refueling and maintenance stopover. That the task group consisted of a superdreadnought as well as three battlecruisers certainly raised eyebrows.

But her flag lieutenant was suspicious enough to detect some odd details about this fleet.

"Ma'm," lieutenant Falkener started, "I don't think I like what I'm seeing."

"How so, lieutenant?" Though nonchalant, Harper was no fool. She also detected a few odd signs about this particular fleet, even though the four ships were instantly identified to be Sollies.

"Admiral, there's no real reason for those ships to assume an offensive wedge formation. And I don't like their acceleration rate. They must be pushing their nodes hard. If that superdreadnought is a _Maximilliam_-class like the silhouette assumes it is, then it must be burning at 95 percent capacity. I'd hate to foot the bill if such a ship kept that pace for long."

Indeed, Harper thought. No superdreadnought would ever want to go over 80 percent capacity if it wanted keep her alpha and beta nodes intact for more than a month.

"They might have some urgency. Perhaps they've taken up damage?"

"Then they'd be much better off at the nearby Fisher system. God knows how bit their repair station is over there. I don't think there's a trivial reason behind that high acceleration, and neither do I think their offensive wedge formation should be taken lightly."

Harper grimaced, "It could be that their CO is just an arrogant git. I've sure seen plenty of them at the academy. How soon ago did we send a query?"

"As soon as we detected their presence, ma'm. We've sent many identification query's over the past hour, but we still haven't received any response. Since they emerged right at the edge of the hyper limit twelve light minutes away, we should have gotten a response twenty two minutes after they appeared. But so far we've got nothing at all."

"Hm… are you really sure they're Sollies?"

"The ship classes are unmistakable. But by the unusual composition and behavior, I don't think it's the SLN. I have a feeling they belong to the Office of Frontier Security."

That definitely darkened the mood within the improvised flag bridge on board the SLN space station. The Office of Frontier Security was a largely unaccountable organization within the League that 'enforced' the peace at the outer edge of the League dominion. As a rear admiral, Sandra had heard many questionable acts from her fellow admirals within the regular navy that the OFS perpetrated at the Verge. Certain acts like 'protecting' an independent planet at the request of some fringe group, or protecting it without anyone even asking to, made a good excuse for the vessels of the OFS to barge in. Then somehow, quite subtly Harper suspected, the government or governments would 'voluntarily' give up some of their sovereignty in the 'interest' of their security. All in all, there is no coincidence at the recent increasing rate of expansion of the League. Nor did the bank accounts of any OFS bureaucrats stayed pitiful, either.

The prospect of servicing any OFS vessel gave Harper the shivers.

"Undock all of our stationed vessels. Bring them to a heightened state of alert. I don't think there's a need to call our men to battle stations, but warn the captains that they might have to. And get me a link to Commodore Tracy."

"Establishing a link to Commodore Tracy, ma'm.", the comm. officer diligently acknowledged. Soon enough, a screen popped up from a display at her seat.

"Hello Beatrice. I assume you've noticed our _guests_."

"Hello Sandra. Ah, I haven't been paying attention to that group until you just put out a general alarm. I can see by their acceleration and formation that they're not here for a friendly chat."

"There's definitely something wrong, Beatrice. I'd bet my mother's bra that those are OFS goons. We have to assume their notorious reputation has some.. truthfulness."

Tracy was definitely gloomier at the mention of the OFS. "What are they thinking, then? We're a full Solarian League member, not a neobarb colony!"

"I don't think they see a difference between us desert dwellers and the neobarbs in the Verge. But your point illuminates an obvious question. What do they want with us?"

"If we haven't identified as Solly already I'd be inclined to say they're here for a raid. Which is absolutely ridiculous."

"However ridiculous their current behavior may be, we don't have the luxury to assume that's a simple incompetent and arrogant officer they have in charge over there. I think we're looking at the real possibility of a shooting match coming out."

The commodore found it hard not to drop her jaw and drool. There was simply no way a Solly ship would open fire at another Solly ship. They were part of the same, huge entity. They were supposed to respond to the base defense's query, and then the highest ranking officer of the visiting fleet would come by for dinner at Harper's invitation. Tracy just prayed it would be like that.

Suddenly, a comm. officer announced, "Incoming transmission.. it's coming from the superdreadnought, ma'm."

Harper grimaced. "Patch it through, Lieutenant Drake."

Communications through vast amounts of space were limited by the speed of light. In most cases, that meant there was a significant time lag between the moment a message has been sent by one party, and the moment that the other party had received it. Running a quick estimate through her head, Harper noted that the message was sent at least nine minutes ago.

"Rear admiral Sandra Harper of the 650th Defense Fleet stationed at the Trax System, this is vice admiral Robert Ney."

Harper instantly gloomed at the sight of a pompous looking old guard admiral. His flamboyant moustache said it all. And she didn't like the tone quite much either.

"By an emergency decree issued by the Office of Fronter Security, you are ordered to immediately stand down all docked and undocked ships, disarm all combat critical sections of any space station or space fort, and make preparations for boarding action. The details of the decree has already been sent. Failure to acknowledge and act on these orders will prompt serious repercussions as detailed in the decree. You have twenty minutes. Ney out."

Everyone waited in the silence, almost unbelieving that one of their own navy would actually board their stations and take control of the system. Harper was seething with anger. How dare those OFS flunkies walk over her command! And this decree, what was that all about?!

"Lieutenant, patch me the entire decree. And send the same package to the planetary governor."

"Yes, ma'm!"

As soon as the lengthy document was presented, her eyes skimmed over it rapidly. She felt sicker and sicker the more she got through the text. 'Failure to abide by the regulations stipulated by the SLN on the matter of court-martialing at least twelve OFS officers before a non-OFS authorized court'? Well, it wasn't her fault they were harassing the merchants around her turf. 'Confiscating essential supplies from OFS transports'? Hah, essential, if you'd count banned biotoxins and the occasional genetic slave. 'Conducting overly-invasive searches on innocent merchant traffic'? If you'd call Mesan slave transports anything pious then she might agree.

It was obvious by the lengthy list of 'crimes' and 'gross misconducts' that her approach in safeguarding the system and policing the traffic bumped the wrong leg of an OFS bureaucrat. She had only taken over overall command of the system when her rather unpleasant predecessor had a heart attack, and that was just two years ago. That someone at the OFS already wanted her out of the way was quite on the fast side, she thought. And she didn't know _who_ sent admiral Ney out to get her.

"The OFS mean business, don't they?", Commodore Tracy remarked.

"They've been worse than crap these last few centuries. There's no oversight and no direction, with our lame duck parliament and all."

One of the most defining features of the Solarian League is the ineffectiveness of its legislature. Old Earth set a noble standard by regarding each and every member planet as equal. One planet, one vote. In addition, each of those member planets gained a veto, so not a single member would be left out, and compromise and accommodations would be met. The system might have worked if the League compromised only a handful of planets, but today the League had 1784 members. Getting _anything_ through the legislature was a practical nightmare.

And so the bureaucratic institutions that governed the daily life in the SL steadily gained more power, and were likelier to act independently from each other as time passed on. Unfortunately, the Office of Frontier Security led the way in grabbing autonomy. Harper heard of the whispers and the rumors. How the independent planet of Mesa at the Verge had some well-paced authority figures in their pockets. How pirates sometimes acted in concert with the OFS in some troubled regions.

This was definitely another one to add to the list.

* * *

Vice Admiral Foraker entered the room, with Admiral Theisman, a senior doctor, and Benson close behind. On the surface, she was as composed as a professional. On the inside, she was absolutely giddy. The Asian boy sleeping on the bed was the _oldest_ human being, in a way. In another way, he was the _youngest_ fifteen year old ever. Whatever his true age, it was the knowledge he carried that would be beyond precious. Dearly, Foraker would hope this fragile looking boy would help unlock the secrets of _Zero One_ and the O-shield it projected. 

And if not, they had plenty of 'coercive means' to extract that information from him.

No! Lose that thought, Shannon. Bad girl! Theisman would _never_ tolerate torture or any other violation of the Deneb Accords. And she understood the reasoning well. The disastrous widespread abuse and interrogation practices of the StateSec endorsed by Oscar Saint-Just was an enormous black mark for the People's Republic's interstellar standings. Not to mention, the SS was also responsible in suppressing their own citizens in a wave of terror. The absolute low point was when people's commissioners shot every commanding officer, _including_ their families, whenever the failed to perform a duty, even outside of their control.

Theisman stood up for the original constitution that made the Republic of Haven a bastion of freedom and democracy. Though, at its current state, democracy was something us Peeps still had to get used to.

"How is the boy, doctor?", Theisman asked.

"His mineral balance is within a safe margin, and so are his other vitals. Almost all biological effects of his.. unusual birth has been accounted for. It is only his mental state that we are still unsure of. All brain scans have indicated his brains should be functioning properly. There are however some lobes that are unusually enlarged. There are also other parts of his brain that on a normal human being suggested.. some kind of wear and tear. We have no answers as of yet to these abnormalities, sir."

"Hmmm… has there been any tinkering on his body beyond stabilizing it?"

"We have tried to preserve it as naturally healthy as it should be. His genetics and other indications show he has not received prolong treatment. His immune system is also inadequate for most xenobacterial lifeforms throughout the explored universe. We have taken the liberty of hypervaccinating him to an acceptable standard over the days."

"Very well. You say that he can be awakened at any given moment?"

"We are not entirely sure if it will bring any complications, but we are reasonably confident that his body will awake without shock or other unpleasant reactions. Any time is a good time to wake him up."

"Do it."

The doctor nodded and approached the console where most of the wiring connected to. He checked the vital signs before activating an infusion of several chemicals designed to waken the boy as comfortable as possible.

The abrupt stiffening, shaking, and the way his upper body leaned forward was not particularly comfortable. Two assistants burst through the door and tried to hold the rabid boy down. His clear blue eyes opened the first time in two thousand years, only to be blinded by the whiteness of the room. Hoarse screams filled the room as the boy pumped out sound through his dry windpipe. Synapses and neurons that have never been used were flooded with exploding activity in the brain. Chaos, blindness, confusion, despair. Nothing else seemed to matter to the boy than this uncontrollable birth.

As soon as it started, it ended.

The boy sat calmly straight on his bed. The two nurses knew they didn't need to restrain him anymore. His eery _blue_ eyes washed over the room calmly, as if he was just a regular boy. The doctor in charge released his breath, and moved his fingers away from the button to infuse his patient with a strong dose of tranquillizers.

He spoke his very first words in two millennia. "_Water._"

The minute earpiece attached to his right ear briefly startled him as he heard a crude imitation of his own voice repeat what he said in what he recognized was _English_.

A plain glass cup was held over his lips, and he eagerly accepted the invitation as he leaned his head backwards. The liquid was soothing, even though he coughed a few times.

It was only a minute after he was sufficiently settled that he looked about the room. It immediately dawned to him that there was something seriously wrong. The door had no handle. The lights were… unnatural. In any case neither fluorescent nor incandescent. The fabric of his gown, and the sheets of the bed, felt like no other material he knew. He moved his fingers to his right ear and removed the small bud that rested on the top of his earlobe. It was small, black, and shaped like some sort of clip. But it was able to project an unusually loud volume for its size when he spoke another word. Setting it back on his ear, he gazed at the people in the room.

His eyes quickly settled on what he knew, just _knew_, was the one in charge. His attire seemed to look civilian, but the aura he commanded showed he was nothing but a respected military officer. It was both similar.. the boy thought. There was a subtle familiarity in the way this man projected his power, compared to his father. But whereas his father used it to instill fear and distance, this man seemed amorously more.. approachable.

"_Who are you?_", he spoke in his outdated Japanese language.

"Who are you?", was what the entourage heard from the boy's earpiece.

Already prepared, Theisman responded, even slower and calmer than his usual self, "I am Thomas Theisman. Who are you, young boy?"

The boy looked a bit shy, and he hesitated slightly before answering.

"_I am Ikari Shinji, Mist-ah Teis-manu."_

"Just call me Tom."

"Hai… Tom."

"Doctor.. how is he holding up? Have you sedated him or injected him with any medicine?"

"Ah no, sir. I was about to, but he seems stabilized now."

"Excellent."

The boy followed the brief conversation with slight curiosity. Nevertheless, he was still totally confused where he was, and why everything in the room was so.. _wrong_.

The middle age looking figure turned back to the boy and continued, "Now Shinji.. if that is your first name, listen carefully. What I am about to say will come as a startling, if not shocking revelation to you. Please, prepare yourself, and stay calm."

The boy nodded.

Carefully, he continued in his most soothing but not overdone tone, "We recovered your body from a white capsule that was ejected from a giant biomechanical construct. Are you familiar with _Zero One_?"

The boy's eyes instantly darkened. There was so much sadness, and so much anger behind his expression. Still, he was able to let out, "_Sho Gouki. EVA… Hai..._"

"EVA?", the admiral curiously let out.

He seemed to hesitate. Then he looked around, thinking. A sense of gradual resolution, and submission, began to creep his mind. There was no way back, he suspected. Nothing mattered anymore.

"Evangelion Unit-01.", he answered crisply, and he noted that the orange-haired lady, in an obvious military attire, scribbled down what he just said in an unusual handheld device. And so did that other man who seemed to stare at him in an.. unpleasantly focused way. The boy had no doubt his every word was recorded, analyzed, and whatnot put in a blender and rearranged for the simple reason that they could.

"This is probably going to be the most shocking revelation, but I want to make it clear as soon as I can, for your sake."

The boy nodded.

"Shinji.. you are not in your own time anymore. We excavated up your.. _Evangelion_.. though we could not penetrate the shield that protected it. But it was buried for a long time, a very long time. We have reason to believe.. you came from a time two thousand and nine years ago."

For a minute, reality simply refused to be acknowledged. There was no way, the boy thought. Denial slowly crept towards fear and uncertainty. Was everyone dead? Was he all alone? Did he have nothing to run back home to? Anger lashed his thoughts as he wondered at the injustice, at what his vague memories of the last day he spent 2009 years ago. The carnage, the blood, the white EVA's, and… the end of it all.

But in another way.. it didn't matter. He never questioned the how's, nor the why's. What mattered was whatever happened had happened. He felt so far out of tune that he was not struck with grief, or homesickness. He barely had anything in his short-term memory. Everything and anything that was _his_ was distantly archived in his long-term memory.

"Continue."

Theisman was certainly surprised at how.. fast the boy came to terms with his situation. He obviously thought the boy would be absolutely hysterical at the news. This was no ordinary boy.

"There is something else. Two thousand years is an incredible time span, and so much of human society has changed. We are currently living in the year 1921 post Diaspora. Post Diaspora means the year after the first space flight of the first interplanetary colony ship, the _Prometheus._ That means.. we're not on Terra. We are in fact on a space station orbiting a planet well over five hundred and fifty light years away from Old Earth."

Somehow the fact he was actually not on earth struck him even harder. People lived among the stars? Was he floating in space? The boy sensed nothing peculiarly different from the gravity he currently experienced. Was there a way to produce artificial gravity in the future? Two thousand years was a long time for technological progress… they must have already.

But he was in space! The boy felt a sudden urge to leap out of his bed and find the nearest view to gaze outwards into space. But the mirror that adorned the side of the room indicated there was no view directly nearby.

"If I am not on Earth.. where am I then?", he tentatively asked.

"We are on the RHNSS _Belvedère_, a space station orbiting a planet of the star system Gaston. It is located 'north' on the galactic map from Earth, 550 light years away. Gaston is but one of the hundred systems that belong to the Republic of Haven, which the second largest political entity in the universe besides the Solarian League headed by Old Earth. The star system of Haven is about fifty light years 'east' of here. The city of Nouveau Paris on Haven is our capital city."

The boy found it absolutely fascinating.. even in the future society wasn't united under a single banner.

"There are more.. nations?"

"Certainly. There are quite thousands, if not tens of thousands more independent settled star systems. Most are single planet entities, some are united under the star nations of Matapan, Asgard, the Anderman Empire, and the Star Kingdom of Manticore. In fact, we are at war."

"War?", the boy responded fearfully. There was still fighting.. humankind never changed. And to think these people, _all_ of these people, were at war with someone else. He didn't understand where these people were born, or how they were raised, or what they did to achieve their ranks and positions. But he didn't need to know these future humans to know how a war affected them. Sympathy washed over him.

"The Republic of Haven is at war against an alliance led by Manticore. The Anderman Empire, some powerful single planet governments such as Alizon and Grayson, and a dozen or more minor planets are part of that alliance. For now, we are.. evenly matched."

Evenly matched, though that depends on specific interpretations and how far you were looking ahead, Theisman thought.

"I will be candid with you, Shinji. Both sides have suffered major losses in a recent major battle. We have lost many modern vessels, and we've lost even more personnel. Even though our industrial capacity exceeds theirs, we are in a precarious position because of their superior technology."

The boy knew where this conversation was headed.

"The discovery of _Zero One_ presented an unimaginable opportunity for us. We would like you to deactivate the shield _Zero One_ is projecting and let us reverse engineer the technology that enables such a powerful shield to appear. I will not lie to you, the ability to project an invincible shield can single handedly turn around this war and force the Alliance to settle for a peace treaty. As the Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations of the Republic, I want to ask you to help us win this war."

He was still stunned, but indecisive. Theisman wasn't surprised, it was barely fifteen minutes since he first awakened in a very long time, and he probably didn't trust anyone quite yet.

"Let me assure you, the Republic of Haven is an honest nation, and the Republic of Haven Navy fights fair and holds itself rigidly to any interstellar regulation. I must admit we had a lot of widespread incompetence, mismanagement, corruption, and abuse of power in our past. But we have changed all of that, and we have become a free and prosperous nation. To be fair, the Manties are also quite honorable, except for a lengthy period of time in the recent past. But they are an arrogant and short-sighted nation. They refused to negotiate in good faith in a previous period of truce, and they are still unwilling to settle for peace even after we clearly desired to. They are a Kingdom, and their Queen has a certain sway over the public and its leadership. And she is a woman prone to violent outbursts. It is not the right way to lead a country."

The boy seemed more interested. Just a little more to push him to his side of the boat.

"If you would help us, we will reward you amply. You will learn the ways of what being a Havenite really is, and you will be sufficiently accommodated in any part of the Republic you should choose to settle in. You will be fed, provided an education, and we will protect you. But you are also free to shape your own life in the Republic, as how it should be. In addition, we will provide you with a genetic treatment, which is perfectly harmless and noninvasive, that is able to prolong your aging. We can make you live up to two hundred or three hundred."

Now that provided the boy with a powerful incentive.And the way his eyebrows raised so much, he might definitely be interested.

"Will you choose to aid the Republic of Haven to acquire peace with its enemies, Shinji?"

Surprisingly for all of them, the boy immediately responded.

"_No_."

* * *

"Admiral, I don't quite understand why you insist on—" 

The comm. screen on board the flag bridge of the _Bargant_-class heavy cruiser SLN _Valiant_ was smaller, older, and less quaint. But it was still acceptable, Harper supposed.

"For the last time governor! We are not going to let ourselves be steamrolled by a few OFS lackeys and let Trax suffer under their hegemony."

The overweight governor cranked, and poised, "You just want to save your own ass."

"You know as well as I do how the new protectorate worlds under the control of the OFS are suffering. We don't deserve that kind of treatment. Trax doesn't deserve that kind of treatment. The OFS won't stop with arresting me, governor al-Dabu. We're not going to discuss this anymore. Prepare your ports for receiving evacuated non-essential personnel. Don't allow any traffic to enter and leave. We've already sent a general warning to all the merchants to either hyper out, or sit tight and obey the incoming fleet's instructions if they can't escape. Harper out."

Sandra sighed. Perhaps she was out to save her own skin. But her reasons were in accord with the majority of her subordinates. Well, she thought so at least. But she had drilled them well, and she had no doubt they would risk their lives to guard their home planet. Unlike other fleets in the SLN, the Defense Fleet consisted mainly of personnel from the star system they were defending. They all had an interest in keeping their cozy planet prosperous and free.

"Any word on them yet?", Harper asked.

Lt. Drake replied, "We have received no word at all. It's been two hours since your reply has been sent."

The admiral glanced at the three dimensional holographic plot. The bright twin stars of Trax burned in the middle, and orbiting it was Trax III. Orbiting Trax III was the SLNSS _Jupiter_. And stationed near the space station was half of her fleet. The twelve practically obsolete heavy cruisers by fifty years slowly undocked and moved into a defensive formation, protecting the station and nearby facilities against an improbable extreme range missile attack.

Not that she expected it from a _Maximillian_-class superdreadnought, which for all intents and purposes is as obsolete as her own ships. At least they had a level playing field, Harper thought. OFS might have refitted their capital ships with the new Multi Drive Missiles pioneered by the Manties, but they were hard strapped for credits, and they didn't need them most of the time against pathetic single planet militia. She was pretty certain their commander would have fired its load already at a range of sixty million kilometers from her position if they had MDMs.

"Seems they don't have MDMs or other nasty surprises.", her tactical officer lieutenant commander Guerdas remarked.

Her chief of staff, commodore Robertson replied, "It might be that their compensators are upgraded. They're still running at 95 percent at original capacity, so it might be that they got the first Technodyne Industries inertial compensators installed. We might be looking at only 80 to 85 percent capacity at this very moment."

"Hmm, that might definitely be true Robertson. Warn Tracy and the captains of this insight Lt. Drake, if they haven't figured it out already."

"Yes, ma'm, I'm on it."

She looked at the plot again. The four menacing red icons of one superdreadnought and three escorting battlecruisers had gained steadily more acceleration ever since they entered the system. At four hundred gravities, they were well on their way on a least time intercept course for the space station. But She knew they would apply the brakes soon enough, to prevent them from overshooting their intended position. Since it took hours to achieve their current velocity, it took the same amount of hours to make them stop.

And Harper took advantage of that. In a normal straightforward battle between two dozens of non-capital ships against a superdreadnought and three battlecruisers, the latter group would tear the cruisers and destroyers apart. Battlecruisers were designed to be cruiser-killers, while a superdreadnought is near impervious against mosquito bites pesky destroyer-sized missiles would inflict. They overpowered her in terms of tonnage.

But she had the home advantage. While her 30th Cruiser Squadron defended the space station, commodore Tracy's 55th Light Squadron of light cruisers and destroyers hid behind the moon of a gas giant, with her impeller drive hot but not activated. It took about forty or fifty minutes to activate an impeller drive from the cold up, but she had plenty of preparation time.

She took a lesson from Harrington's playbook for this plan. The Manty admiral was legendary, and each of her battles were published prominently on local military channels. From the looks of it, it seemed likely that the enemy squadron were going through barge through her pitiful pair of forts that would soon be in range to fire. But while they were occupied with them, commodore Tracy would bring her squadron up from their flanks in stealth. Since any impeller wedges would be instantly detected in real-time, she ordered her squadron to initiate _fusion_ propulsion, and let them run ballistic when they came close.

No commanding officer sane enough would ever want to burn eighty percent of their fusion bottles for an incredibly wasteful and inefficient translation. But as Harrington showed, the price could be well worth it, if the enemy squadron weren't prepared and didn't have active scans on.

As soon as the enemy squadron reached a particular point, she saw commodore Tracy slowly accelerating from the orbit of the moon to a predetermined calculated path. Soon, Harper thought, they'll find their kilts will be burning hot.

"Put the space station and the heavy cruisers on Red. Full battle stations. And commence Pigeon Stalker."

"Relaying the commands, ma'm."

For an added effect, she'd ordered her small flotilla of pirate hunting frigates to gather at a specific point opposite of where Tracy would come out of. Harper made it seem like a belated attempt at an ambush, and she had no doubt the faster frigates would never actually skirt inside their missile envelop. When their minds were focused on the forts and the swarm of frigates, Tracy would pounce on them at close range, while the Cruiser Squadron would focus their fire in the midst of their confusion.

She glanced at the plot. The hours passed by since they were on full alert. Part of the _charm_ of naval battles was the incredible length of time it took for enemy ships to come in range. In the scope of millions of kilometers, starships traveled relatively slow. Everyone had the time to make minor adjustments, or to recalculate certain probable vectors. But the admiral already had her plan worked out _a year_ ago.

Sandra dearly hoped the enemy commander, most likely the one with the flamboyant moustache, underestimated the capacity of a swarm of heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers. She knew very well that whenever a CO had command of a superdreadnought, they thought only other capital ships would be a threat. The tendency of regarding non-capital ships as basically flies to swat was dangerous for any bright commander. The swarm of harassing frigates, constantly buzzing around their flanks _just_ beyond the edge of their missile envelope, was a well thought of ploy to reinforce that tendency in their minds.

Lt. Commander Guerdas, reported, "Commodore Tracy is within their missile envelope. It would be ten minutes before she deactivates her fusion drive, and forty minutes before they cross paths. The heavy cruisers are steadily accelerating, and they will reach missile range shortly before forty minutes have passed."

"Let us pray we disarray them good enough to offset their tonnage advantage."

"I surely hope so."

Harper looked away from the abstract tactical plot and glanced over the large visual screen. The flag bridge on board the _Valiant_ was situated well within the middle of the cylinder-shaped ship with two hammerheads on the bow and stern. But that still didn't diminish the charm of the vast emptiness of space projected on the screen.

Somewhere, out there and millions of kilometers away, four hostile starships were on their way to take over her planet, or at least hold them in check before the gendarmerie came to occupy them. There was no flicker at all on her view that indicated the incoming train of mass. The distances were too far. Nobody ever relied on optical instruments when waging a space war. Passive scans such as radar, and active scans such as lidar had a much greater range and effectiveness. Visual confirmation was only useful for confirming their ship classes or checking if they didn't tow anything unusual with them. But by their acceleration rate, it was unlikely that they towed any missile pods that had a devastating effect on the Manty-Peep wars.

This would have to be a good old fashioned engagement.

"Projected position of Tracy's squadron is within three million klicks of their position. They show no indication of having detected their presence."

Somehow, she felt it was too good to be true.

"I don't think they'll make it to energy range. Let's accelerate the heavy cruisers and cut 8 minutes off reaching missile range. Prepare all ships in the squadron to rotate their port side towards the enemy and fire a full missile broadside as soon as we reach the edge of our missile range. Assigned targets are still valid. Leave the SD as last."

"Forwarding the commands."

This would lessen the double hammer approach Harper envisioned. She decided to move her heavy cruisers faster upfront and fire her missiles earlier than projected. The cruisers would have to burn with almost no margin of error, but she had confidence in her crew to pull it off. The extra time would focus the OFS ships in countering her missiles, and hopefully move their eyes – and scans – away from Tracy's ambush. But it also meant that the stationary forts couldn't fire their missiles in conjunction with the cruiser's first volley. That would lessen her volley's effectiveness. In the age of missiles, counter-missiles, and Electronic Warfare, firing as much missiles in a single instant provided better penetration and a chance to overwhelm the enemy's defenses.

She dearly hoped they didn't suspect her plan. They were OFS, and not part of the regular Solarian League Navy. They wouldn't have access to a list of the composition of the 650th Defense Fleet.

"Cruiser Squadron will reach missile range in ten minutes. Light Squadron is still on a ballistic course, approaching a range of two million kilometers. They will reach extreme energy weapons range in twenty minutes."

The moment was almost upon them. Soon, people would die because of her decisions. People she knew, people she drilled with, people she commanded, some of them won't make it out alive. But they knew what they were fighting for, and they knew what was at stake. Whatever was about to happen here, it would have major repercussions within the League most likely. She had already sent a dispatch boat, and no doubt many fleeing merchants would pass on the news.

But that was for later. Her mind was focused on the imminent battle.

The minutes passed by.

The enemy approached relentlessly, already gaining a vector of several tenths the speed of light.

Her heavy cruisers met them head on, slower, but still fast.

The swarm of frigates became bolder, and threatened missile fire upon them with their frequent passing in their missile range.

The squadron under Tracy still coasted along in a ballistic trajectory, calculated to meet the enemy right behind their kilts.

"Sixty seconds before reaching extreme missile range."

Harper rapped, "Prepare for firing pattern Phalanx 2, and defense pattern Link 1."

"The patterns has been passed on."

As soon as her twelve heavy cruisers passed an invisible line six million kilometers away from her opponent, the ships rotated to present their sides and a large number of missiles were fired from their broadsides. Each _Bargant_-class cruiser carried a broadside of eleven tubes. Thus, in an instant one hundred and thirty two missiles coasted towards the enemy formation. In an instant after she fired her missiles, the enemy fired their own broadside in return. A SD boasted an impressive number of thirty five tubes per broadside, while her three BC escorts carried sixteen tubes per side. Thus, eighty three menacing missiles streaked down their path.

Using missile pod technology to achieve volleys of thousands, tens of thousands, if not hundred thousands missiles, the Manties and the Peeps would absolutely _weep_ at the size of a volley numbering around a pitiful hundred. But at least both sides in this engagement were using obsolete ships.

Each eighty ton missile accelerated at an impressive forty five thousand _g_'s, and would reach their targets within three minutes. Firing plan Phalanx 2 called for concentrated, carefully aimed volleys. They were able to achieve a faster rate of fire, but that would burn through her magazines within twenty minutes. That would be a dear waste when missiles fired at extreme range hardly ever hit their targets in small volleys. There was barely any drive fuel left for evasive patterns.

Her own formation prepared for the incoming barrage of missiles. Her twelve cruisers was formed in a staggered wall pattern, providing a high degree of countermeasure coverage.

The missiles loomed closer. Defense pattern Link 1 called for firing counter missiles and activating EW measures at a range of a million klicks. As soon as the eighty three birds came into effective range, the cruisers spat out their counter missiles. Much smaller than the massive eighty ton warbird, these missiles streaked past with an even higher acceleration. CMs carried no charge. They didn't need any, since they use their own impeller wedge to collide with the enemy missile's wedge to destroy both missiles.

The missiles and CMs met. Many normal birds today carried a minor amount of EW measures, sometimes simple enough to fool CMs to lose their lock. Otherwise, sometimes they simply missed their mark. That was hardly surprising considering the speeds involved. The CMs managed to annihilate a third of the incoming birds. EW measures, projected from the heavy cruisers, managed to fool another third of losing their lock or reorienting themselves to fly off into a sun.

That still left twenty eight deadly missiles, coming in too fast to be met with another CM volley.

The cruisers rotated and presented their bellies towards the missiles, using their impenetrable wedge to shield off most of the damage that would be expected. Last ditch laser clusters, manned by both AI and crews, fired from their posts at the broadsides, bow, and stern of the ships. Sometimes they managed to score a hit, and eventually, they managed to down eight more birds.

Then came the explosions.

Some of the missiles carried a five hundred megaton nuclear charge. They didn't need to hit a ship at point blank range. Every missile was capable of damaging an area of effect. The nuclear missiles exploded at their preprogrammed position, and it was soon clear that this volley was concentrated at thee heavy cruisers at the edge of her formation. Explosive blasts rippled the space around them, and the radiation emanating from them distorted sensors, damaged vulnerable modules on the surface of a ship, and interfered with electronics. Six nukes exploded against the cruisers' impeller wedge, which deflected the blast harmlessly.

Two managed to slip past and explode against the starboard sidewall of the SLN _Falcon_. The first one ripped the sidewall apart, the second managed to damage what lay underneath.

"Incoming damage report! _Falcon_ lost missile tubes 1, 2, 4, laser 2, gravitics 1, and the personnel crewing them. Two beta nodes are critically damaged, and her acceleration is reduced by twenty percent."

While the nukes peppered _Falcon_, the missiles aimed at _Venice_ and _Stargazer_ carried an even deadlier charge. They exploded, each warbird unleashing a deadly barrage of twenty five X-rays in every direction. Anything within a range of twenty five thousand kilometers had a chance to be penetrated by the highly concentrated rays. Many just traveled through empty space. Some were stopped by an impeller wedge. However, there were too many warheads, and several rays penetrated easily through the sidewalls of both _Venice_ and _Stargazer_.

BCs and especially SDs carried heavier missiles with a higher amount of power, necessary to punch through the thick layers of armor of capital ships. Against lighter ships such as heavy cruisers, they were having a field day. One such X-ray managed to penetrate right through _Venice_'s captain's bridge, decapitating most of the chain of command on that vessel. Several more wrecked havoc through the broadside mounts. _Venice_'s starboard was already wrecked to pieces.

"_Venice_'s communications have been knocked out! Their wedges are falling out! She's drifting off from the formation."

However, _Stargazer_ bore an equal punch. Each deadly ray ripped straight through the flimsy sidewall and wrecked havoc within. Crews within the path of the rays were cooked, and equipment were exploding. Tens or hundreds were dying all around the ship.

"_Stargazer_ has lost missile tubes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, laser 5 and 6, engineering 2, communications 2, and one fusion plant had an emergency shutdown. They still have enough redundancy in power to carry on, but its port broadside is wrecked."

At least they managed to shut down the fusion plant. If it had exploded, it would have taken the entire cruiser with it.

"Order any nearby frigates or light vessels to retrieve evacuated and wounded crews from _Venice_ and _Stargazer_. _Venice _is dead meat, so leave it behind. _Stargazer _and the surrounding cruisers should close the gap left by _Venice_. Launch the third volley."

"Aye, admiral."

Harper stared at the closing second volley of their fire. Only a few more minutes until commodore Tracy could catch them completely blind. She looked at the enemy ships, and her volleys.

"What's the damage on their ships with our first volley?"

Guerdas replied, "BC 1 is leaking atmosphere. Reporting moderate damage on both its broadsides. BC 2 has received light damage. BC 3 and SD 1 remain unharmed."

Harper knew she was lucky that the first volley damaged one of their BCs in such magnitude. Cruiser-sized warbirds were faster, but lighter and less damaging than the missiles capital ships carried. They had less penetration power, and Harper had little hope of damaging the thick skinned superdreadnought at this range. Best to neutralize the threat of the softer BCs first. Her following volleys should inflict more damage now, since their countermeasures have been reduced.

But likewise, her own squadron's effectiveness had been reduced.

Another eighty three missiles streaked closer towards their position. CMs met them head on, filtering out a chunk of them. EW units had time to adapt their algorithms from input they learned from the first volley to confuse a larger number of birds from the second volley. Still, seventeen managed to punch through.

_Valiant_ rumbled from the blast of a nuke. Harper was almost knocked from her seat.

"_Valiant_ has lost laser 1 and 2, and missile tube 3! _Stargazer_ is getting a light pounding on her starboard side. _Luther Paris_ reports a damaged beta node and missile tubes 3 and 4 are lost."

"Switch _Stargazer_ behind the wall of battle, and make sure other ships are shielding it. Fire the next broadside as soon as able."

"Passing the order, ma'm."

Now, it should just be the perfect time for Commodore Tracy to pop up close to their rear. Admiral Harper grinned.

The enemy formation weren't completely caught by surprise. At a range of one-point-three million kilometers, a diligent tech managed to detect the silent destroyers and light cruisers coasting along from the flank. Frantically, the formation started to rotate to meet the incoming threat.

Too late.

By the time the SD started to rotate its sluggishly huge one and a half kilometer long body, the DDs and CLs had activated their hot impeller wedges and accelerated to keep an open angle inside the unprotected rear of the superdreadnought. As soon as they reached extreme energy weapons range of one million kilometers, the small and nimble ships rotated and presented their broadsides. Twenty regular lasers, and four high powered grasers carried by the light cruisers, streaked forward at the speed of light in a daring attempt of an up-the-kilt shot.

It took just over two seconds for the rays to reach their target.

Tracy's command had managed to sneak close behind their path that they managed to fire their energy weapons at the unprotected stern of the superdreadnought. Current Solly technology was unable to project sidewalls on the front or rear of a starship. If they could, then Tracy's ships would have come within a range of at least five hundred thousand kilometers to penetrate it. That would have been tactically impossible, as they were sure to detect her ballistic passage well before they could fire.

The DDs and CLs were already left behind by the larger ships. They simply had too much time to accelerate at a stupendous velocity, and Tracy had been unable to accelerate to catch up with them by fusion drive alone. Therefore, they had no more chances of unleashing another barrage of lasers and grasers. But it was enough.

The lasers instantly pounded through the rear, causing widespread destruction to the rear half of the SD. To be honest, destroyer-sized and cruiser-sized energy mounts were smaller and less effective than their capital ship's equivalent. But twenty shots right up the kilt of the SD was a crippling blow. Mounts were burned apart or simply exploded. People were ejected into cold space by the holes that were punched through the hull. Deadly rumblings began to shiver throughout the body of the SD.

But it were the four graser strikes that managed to luck out. Larger and stronger than their regular laser brothers, these robust energy weapons operated in the gamma ray range. From the extreme intensity, many crew who were unfortunate to be in its path were mutilated. The grasers penetrated deeply within the ship, especially helped by the absence of a sidewall.

One such graser managed to damage an inertial compensator component deep within the ship, protected by the thickest layers of armor. It shut down.

And five thousand lives aboard the _Napoleon_ instantly flew against the bulkheads and walls at 400 _g_'s of force. It was a very bloody sight.

"We have visual confirmation! The SD's inertial compensators malfunctioned! It's neutralized!"

Rear admiral Harper felt a fleeting surge of success and pride flow into her. The tide of battle had been turned instantly with the knockout of that four million ton monstrosity. Her side was too numerous and too overwhelming for the three BCs to defeat. And she hope they knew that.

"Tracy should already have ordered them to stand down their weapons, power down their wedges, and prepare for boarding action. If they continue to fire, proceed with firing pattern Phalanx 1. Otherwise, hold your fire."

She looked at the status list. One of their BCs where she had focused most of her fire upon was a non-entity in terms of offensive and defensive power. The other two could manage to make a powerful stand, but she doubted they would carry on.

But their intense volleys of missile fire had taken the toll of her Cruiser Squadron. _Falcon_'s fusion bottles exploded from the following volleys, turning the once proud heavy cruiser in a burning wreck and killing almost every crew inside. _Venice_ had been pound into submission and would have to be scrapped. _Stargazer_ had taken such a heavy toll that it would be cheaper to build a new cruiser rather than to repair it, so it would have to be scrapped as well.

Losing just three heavy cruisers at the price of taking out a superdreadnought was well worth it. The loss ratio in terms of tonnage was well over five to one. Her ragtag Defense Fleet should never have been able to put up against an SD and BC squadron in conventional battle. She knew she had to thank all of it for commodore Tracy's excellent ambush. She'll have to invite her to a grand feast as soon as she was able.

Still, the loss of life accompanying the heavy cruiser was going to be a deathblow to the planet's population. Every immediate family of the deceased will hound for her blood. Gods… what has the Solarian League come to. Harper had a suspicion Trax wasn't the only system to be invaded by the OFS. In fact, by the low amount of ships they sent against Harper, she definitely thought similar systems were invaded. And unlike what just happened here, those systems would drop like flies. Defense Fleet commanders were usually put into their position by politics and patronage. Training standards were lax. No one ever made serious effort to keep their starships in top shape. Not like the 650th Defense Fleet. Not like what Admiral Harper had done.

It could well mean civil war.

* * *

**Glossary**

**BC—**

Battlecruiser. The lightest unit considered a 'capital ship'. Designed to destroy anything it can catch and to outrun anything that can destroy it. Average tonnage from 500,000-1,200,000 tons.

**Beta node—**

Secondary generating nodes of a spacecraft's impeller wedge. They contribute only to the impeller wedge used for normal-space movement. Less powerful and less expensive than alpha nodes.

**CA—**

Heavy cruiser (from Cruiser, Armored). Designed for commerce protection and long-endurance system pickets. Designed to stand in for capital ships against moderate level threats. Average tonnage is from 160,000–350,000 tons, although that has begun to creep upward towards traditional battlecruiser tonnage ranges in some navies.

**CL—**

Light cruiser. The primary scouting unit of most navies. Also used for both commerce protection and raiding. Average tonnage is from 90,000–150,000 tons.

**DD—**

Destroyer. The smallest hyper-capable warship currently being built by most navies. Average tonnage is from 65,000-80,000 tons.

**Deneb Accords—**

The generally accepted rules of war, sponsored by the Solarian League at Deneb. The accords are meant to protect the rights of military personnel in times of war, defending them from abuse and torture.

**Hyper Limit—**

The critical distance from a given star at which starships may enter or leave hyper-space. The limit varies with the mass of the star. Very large planets have hyper limits of their own.

**Impeller Drive—**

The standard reactionless normal-space drive of the Honor Harrington universe, employing artificially generated bands (or "wedges") of gravitic energy to provide very high rates of acceleration. It is also used in hyper-space outside gravity waves.

**Impeller Wedge—**

The inclined planes of gravitic stress formed above and below a spacecraft by its impeller drive. A military impeller wedge's "floor" and "roof" are impenetrable by any known weapon.

**Inertial Compensator—**

A device which creates an "inertial sump," diverting the inertial forces associated with acceleration into a starship's impeller wedge or a naturally occurring gravity wave, thus negating the g-force the ship's crew would otherwise experience. Smaller vessels enjoy a higher compensator efficiency for a given strength of wedge or gravity wave and thus can achieve higher accelerations than larger vessels.

**Laser Clusters—**

Last ditch, close range anti-missile point defense systems.

**Manties—**

Slang term for citizens of and (especially) military personnel/forces of the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

**Office of Frontier Security—**

A largely autonomic government agency of the Solarian League. Their main task is promoting stability and order in and around the systems near the edge of the League. As the League's representative institution became increasingly incapable of overseeing the League's bureaucracy, the OFS became increasingly corrupt over the centuries. Instead of maintaining peace, the OFS became an unscrupolous expansionist entity and has established its own foreign policy. The unchecked activities of the OFS were worsened by its deals with the League's massive interstellar corperations and commercial interests, in particular Manpower Unlimited from the planet of Mesa.

**Peeps—**

Slang term for citizens and (especially) military personnel of the (Peoples') Republic of Haven.

**SD—**

Superdreadnought. The largest and most powerful hyper-capable warship. Average tonnage is from 6,000,000–8,500,000 tons.

**Sidewalls—**

Protective barriers of gravitic stress projected to either side of a warship to protect its flanks from hostile fire. Not as difficult to penetrate as an impeller wedge, but still a very powerful defense.

**Solarian League—**

Largest, wealthiest star nation of the explored galaxy, with a decentralized government managed by extremely powerful bureaucracies.

**Sollies—**

Slang term for citizens or military personnel of the Solarian League.

**StateSec—**

Also 'SS'. Office of State Security. The successor to Internal Security under the Committee of Public Safety. Even more powerful than InSec. Headed by Oscar Saint-Just, originally second-in-command of InSec, who betrayed the Legislaturalists to aid Rob S. Pierre in overthrowing them. Now defunct and split up under the modern Republic of Haven as the FIA, FIS, and NavInt among others.

'**Up the ****kilt shot'**—

An attack launched from directly astern of a starship in order to fire down the length of its impeller wedge. Due to the geometry of the impeller drive, this is a warship's second most vulnerable aspect.

* * *

**End Notes:** Well, that was another exhausting writing marathon. I'm having a lot of fun writing it, but the technical details are annoying. I have to look up a lot of stuff, like the speed and range of things, to make the battles as realistic as possible in the Honorverse. But writing this kind of fiction is certainly new to me, and I like the style. The third person perspective isn't as quite pure as in other fics, but I think it's well suited to this fic and my own personal writing style. I admit this fic lacks polish. There are probably numerous grammar and style errors throughout the fic. I haven't read it over much since I am strapped for time. I can always go over it later. For now, my enthusiasm wants to write on. 

Thank you for reading this chapter, and I hope you take the time to place a review. I certainly appreciate any feedback you can give me.


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